Why does XP page apps it doesn't need to?

Why does XP page apps it doesn't need to?

My system has 2G of RAM and typically I'm using half, according to Task Manager. "Available Physical Memory" is usually around 1G.

But say I leave an app open, e.g Visual Studio or Adobe Flash CS4 (developer), and go away for awhile, say to eat lunch. When I return and try to do anything in the app I have to wait around while the disk chatters loading it all back in from Virtual Memory.

I can see it in Task Manager - when I leave, Visual Studio might be 90M/124M physical/virtual. When I come back it's 20M/128M, and as soon as I click on something in VS it slowly goes back 90M/124M.

But with a gig of free RAM why does XP page it out??!! (and how can I stop it?)

When it remains unused for longer than a certain length of time. This is Computer Logic which the computer understands to free up resources for what will be used next not what is currently open and inactive.

Windows moves the previously active and unused Data to the Virtual so that when the computer is used there are as many free resources as possible available to use.

But it is how Windows works. The entire idea is that a used application isn't left open and running for long periods of time unused. if it's used it's available but if it's idling in the background it gets Paged out of the Current Operation and stored as a Virtual Operation.

This also happens when you have 4 GIG of RAM loaded but it's a bit faster to load into Memory from the Virtual. That is the only difference.

When it remains unused for longer than a certain length of time. This is Computer Logic which the computer understands to free up resources for what will be used next not what is currently open and inactive.

Windows moves the previously active and unused Data to the Virtual so that when the computer is used there are as many free resources as possible available to use.

But it is how Windows works. The entire idea is that a used application isn't left open and running for long periods of time unused. if it's used it's available but if it's idling in the background it gets Paged out of the Current Operation and stored as a Virtual Operation.

This also happens when you have 4 GIG of RAM loaded but it's a bit faster to load into Memory from the Virtual. That is the only difference.